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05 August 2011

I love cheesecake. I remember as a very young kid it was one of those desserts that was distinctly “adult.” Cheesecake was the dessert I would always get when we went out for dinner. My dad did too. Maybe I even started eating cheesecake to emulate him, but I kept eating cheesecake because it's so good. And in my opinion given a standard cheesecake, blueberry is king.

My mother makes the best cheesecake ever. If you ask her she'll tell you that it's just the Kraft recipe and it's nothing special. I beg to differ. When she makes it's just better. And when she makes cheesecake she goes all out making at least two different toppings; blueberry and likely a strawberry. This is one of the wonderful things about cheesecake, you can make a standard cake and then switch up the flavours by simply changing the toppings.

One of my favourite cheesecake memories was my birthday party circa 1998. A day that has forever been known as “Shindig '98.” I had a bunch of friends over and my mother had already outdone herself with the amount of food she made for us. If you could eat it with your fingers, we were eating it with our fingers :). However, the highlight was my mother surprising me with not one but TWO cheesecakes. A blueberry cheesecake and a frozen chocolate coffee cheesecake. I'll never forget how good they were. I love cheesecake.

For my blogiversary weekend I had initially planned on making Dorie Greenspan's Peanut Butter Torte. That was until I realized how long it had been since I had had a proper cheesecake. I made a PB Fudge Cheesecake last year for my birthday, but that was fancy, I realized it had been almost Two YEARS since eating a traditional blueberry cheesecake. From that moment on I knew it was the one (okay, I was swayed briefly by the idea of a peanut butter cheesecake, but I corrected myself quickly).

Unfortunately there was no way I could get away with making an entire cheesecake. Especially since we would be a man down because my brother won't eat anything with cream cheese. But nuts to him, this was for me, I was going to make what I wanted, though slightly smaller. Thanks in part to this recipe I had a rough estimate of the proportions I would need. Approximately one quarter of a standard cheesecake. I went straight to the cheesecake source, deciding to reduce the basic Kraft recipe (if it's good enough for my mother, it's good enough for me). Because this was only the second cheesecake I would be making on my own I even checked out Kraft's cheesecake tips to make sure I didn't screw things up too much.

I didn't touch any of the recipe proportions except the vanilla and for this special occasion I even broke out the Mexican vanilla. Oh, and one of my mom's "tricks" is that she only ever uses light cream cheese so that's what I used as well. I paid very close and special attention to Kraft's tips. Too much. Lets just say that I was so concerned with not overbeating the eggs that I forgot to make sure the cream cheese-sugar mixture was completely smooth before adding the eggs. Upon pouring the filling into the pie crust I realized that there were still little chunks of cream cheese in the filling. Wonderful. Psst.. don't tell anyone, but this lead me to swishing around the filling and manually crushing all the little pieces of cream cheese by hand (with super clean hands of course, believe me, you could eat off of my hands :)). Sometimes it amazes me the things I'm able to mess up :).

For the blueberry topping I didn't want something gelatin like, I wanted the blueberry sauce that I had grown up with. I used frozen berries because I had them on hand and chose to use brown sugar instead of white. I thought maybe the molasses would add an interesting flavour to the sauce. After reducing the sauce to the thickness I liked, I gave it a taste and found that it already had a bit of a tartness and so decided against adding lemon zest and juice. It seemed redundant (and potentially overpowering). This was my first time making a sauce of this type and I found that there is no trick to it. You just keep reducing until the flavour and the thickness is where you want. If the flavour is good and it's still too loose just add a little more cornstarch. Ta-dah, Adam-proof recipe.

When the cheesecake came out of the oven I could tell it cooked perfectly. It didn't crack at all, and it looked smooth, rich and creamy. And my eyes did not deceive. After chilling for a few hours I paired a slice with a bit of the blueberry sauce and took a bite of a perfect cheesecake. I had almost forgotten how good cheesecake was, especially that great cream cheese tanginess. The vanilla was only slightly noticeable and perhaps not the best use of it, but I didn't care too much. And the blueberry sauce was just lightly sweet and slightly tart, perfect. I really should have made some pancakes to use up the leftovers but instead I just ate it with a spoon (don't judge me :)). Unfortunately I didn't notice the molasses from the brown sugar so it was a gamble that didn't pay off, though I suppose it didn't hurt either :). One of the best things about making a cheesecake this size was that it didn't feel heavy, which probably led me to eating more than I should have :).

I really only had one slight issue. Because I used my standard graham cracker crust and pressed it completely up the sides of the pan, there wasn't enough filling to fill the entire crust. This would have been fine if I was going to layer the blueberry topping, but it didn't work as well with my blueberry sauce. I also felt that there was perhaps a little to much bottom crust for the amount of filling. It's not a bad thing, but next time I think I will either double the filling (so that it fills the crust) or half the crust and only press it up the pie plate half way (the later will not have an effect on baking time).

Despite that one little issue, I could not have been happier with my cheesecake. My last cheesecake venture was quite a stressful one and I was very happy this one wasn't (other than my one little hiccup). I honestly can't believe this is the first cheesecake I have made for my blog, but I promise it won't be the last. Though this brings up the eternal question: is cheesecake a cake or a pie? And what about a cheesecake pie? If cheesecake is a cake, if you make it in a pie plate, does that make it a pie? And if it is a pie, why do I have to call it a pie when I make it in a pie plate? Shouldn't it just be a smaller cheesecake. Am I going to have to create another label called Cake-Pie or Pie-Cake? Aaaaaahh.. how am I supposed to sleep tonight?